I am coming from openSUSE where I used SUSE Studio to build a custom install of openSUSE where only the necessary packages are installed. In this case the kernel, Gnome Desktop, Printing, and Web Browser (Firefox). I believe that is all I have installed. I wanted a very slim OS to place on 15 PCs that I have for general web surfing.

Once I built the image up and had everything customized, locked down desktop so users could not change anything I used Symantec Ghost to ghost the HDD. Using ext3 Ghost works. I don't need LVM and just created a boot, swap, and / partition for these systems. Users are unable to save anything to the local drives. Once the image is dropped down on a new PC openSUSE has the ability to customize the first-boot which I then setup the time, networking, root password and all that good stuff. I also have a package called patch to email which is a cron job that checks the openSUSE update repos for updates and sends me an email regarding what updates are available. This is setup to run weekly in cron.

I discovered Stella and have been running it on my notebook for about 2 months now and want to try and replace my openSUSE Kiosk PCs with this distro. Is there a similiar way for me to do all this with Stella? Slimmed down with just the necessary applications, the ability to print and surf web pages? If I use ext3 partitions I know Ghost will work but couldn't find anything regarding customizing the first boot. Or is there a better method to accomplish what I am wanting to do with this locked down, single user, kiosk web browsing PC?

I believe that sums up what I am looking to do. I really love that everything I have tried to play or do with Stella just worked! Great distro and keep up the good work and most importantly...Thanks!

What you say can be done, but it would require a bit of work. If you're willing to wait I might have some time next week to assist you with this.
In the meanwhile, I wholeheartedly recommend you to check out a proper kiosk distro: http://webconverger.com/
It may well be the answer to all your questions.

That looks cool but I am looking for a free solution much like I have with openSUSE. Not sure I could get the peeps to spend the 100 year even though I think it would be well worth it. Plus I didn't see anything regarding printing.

I am going to continue to research and plug away so I can get Stella to do what I need. That would be great if you could lend me a hand, any assistance is greatly appreciated. Just let me know because I am not in any great hurry just would like to change over to Stella soon. Appears a bit more stable than openSUSE. Next week would be great.

Auto login to a generic user account
Ability to setup a printer for printing, today and I see in the future printer is a Lexmark
Locked down environment so this auto logged in user account cannot save anything to the machine
Web browser that prevents modification by the user, I've found a few plugins that should help (CCK Wizard, Public Fox, and Menu Editor)
Ability to play most web media which Stella already does quite nicely.
Receive email indicating updates are available
These machines will all be using identical hardware so a standard image that could be cloned and have the ability to modify hostnames and all that unique setting per machine when setting up. openSUSE I use first boot to set hostname, root password, etc.

I think this is about it in a nutshell. Let me know if you want or need any more information.

Sounds awesome!! No, I am not in a super big hurry and appreciate your time and effort on this. I am just learning the Stella (RH) way of things with coming from SUSE there are some things that I usually use that don't appear to be present, tool sets. I would love to use Stella and I am looking forward to testing out your final release!

I've played a bit with xguest and it's pretty sweet! I can generate you a custom Stella LiveCD image with xguest enabled or even an image that you can simply "dd" on to the PC's disk.
Let me know if you would like software added or removed (otherwise it's stock Stella packages, some may be useful, some not).
For additional security I can include http://elrepo.org/tiki/kmod-tpe , a really nice piece of software!

Would the LiveCD image have the ability to install to local disk? If so that would work; otherwise, how would I dd the image to the local disk?

Is it possible to print to say a Lexmark printer or I guess any printer for that matter? Since you have stock Stella I am guessing as root I can add printers, etc. I am just trying to think how I will take this Stella Kiosk image and image it to about 15 Kiosk PCs without requiring alot of time on my part to do so. Currently, I just PXE to a Symantec Ghost server and then select the image and when the image is dropped SUSE's YaST FirstBoot launches and I setup the networking, root password, license agreement, etc. Maybe I am overthinking this so once I get the image I will be able to see what else, if anything, may need to be done.

I soooo appreciate your work on this! Should be a good distro for others as well looking for a solid Kiosk image.

If you are able to provide a .GHO file we can try that. We can also try the raw image file as well.

I personally would use 64 bit but I think 32 bit will provide smaller image file right? If not or not that much I would use 64 bit so when the day comes when 32 bit systems are no more this Stella Kiosk image will still live on.

There is no password for the xguest (aka Guest) user. Merely clicking on it in GDM will log you in.
I did notice a bug where when you use "Switch user" as xguest in Gnome GDM won't let you back in. However if you do logout you can log back in without problems.

I'll try to raise a ticket with RedHat, see how we can fix the "switch user" problems.

Yeah, I was trying the LiveCD. I installed to the drive and everything looked alright until I rebooted. Then gdm didn't start but wasn't sure if that was my video card or not. I could login as root and then run gdm but didn't know how to login to guest user as it asked about a security configuration and the default was [N].

Is there a way to customize the guest desktop? Remove all the Desktop icons and maybe even clear off the panel except the Firefox icon. Can probably remove all the other applications as well but it did install pretty quick. I still need to test the printing stuff to see if this user can print to a printer.

Any way to change the / partition to start at 20GB? Also wondering what is the best method to get update notifications? I currently use patch2mail on a weekly cron that emails me the hostname, IP address and what patches are available. This way I am not always checking for updates and the machine tells me it has updates. Makes administration easier.

I have been tied up the last couple of days but hope to test out more in the next day or two. I'll keep you informed and thanks again for all your hard work.

Been busy, too (RedHat dev day, yey!), I'll get back to this issue in the weekend. It would help if you could state your current situation: what works, what doesn't and what requirements are still to be satisfied.

That is how I configured quite a bit of stuff on the openSUSE instance. I just couldn't find much information pertaining to the xguest and when I tried to configure settings obviously when I rebooted those modifications got flushed back to the default xguest settings.

Really a great concept, the xguest user that is, so hopefully there is a way to configure the xguest desktop environment using gconf.

Regarding the panels I would like to move the panel to the bottom. Actually, it would be nice to be able to configure the xguest user with gconf to remove the Desktop icons and other "distractions" that many users would waste time on trying to break the system. Yeah, I have people like that. Feel the need to challenge themselves and try to mess up my Kiosk machines by changing background wallpapers, which is there a way to change that for this xguest user?, and just mess it up for everyone else.

Regarding system updates and notifications, you can install yum-cron and then adjust /etc/sysconfig/yum-cron to your liking.
Additionally you could subscribe to the centos-announce mailing list to be notified of updates:

"13:28 <@z00dax> the announce list gets the emails on a per package basis, but you can also subscribe to the digest version" said the Centos lead dev.

That worked. So I guess I'll need to investigate the gconf stuff to make the other changes.

Granted I could let the users explore mess things up and then reboot to bring the system back but I know I'll get someone who doesn't reboot and then a user will call me saying the system is messed up or worse but some vulger background image on the desktop. I would like to keep everyting static and prevent users from doing anything but print and use the web browser.

I really like the use of this xguest user. Just wish I could configure everything THEN set the enforcing stuff. I have been trying to clear the Desktop of everything except a logout button. This way I could just have the users click this button to clear their activity after using.